


If I had Known

by lasairfhiona



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasairfhiona/pseuds/lasairfhiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Had I known my heart would break, I would've loved you anyway."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I had Known

***

_If I'd have known the way that this would end  
If I'd have read the last page first  
If I'd have had the strength to walk away  
If I'd have known how this would hurt_

_I would've loved you anyway  
I'd do it all the same  
Not a second I would change  
Not a touch that I would trade  
Had I known my heart would break  
I'd have loved you anyway_

_Song by Trish Yearwood_

***

I can't help it. I still watch the political reports. I still watch for him. It's a habit honed by thirty years of marriage. A habit too hard to break even after three years of divorce.

One of the news shows ran a special on the Bartlet Administration. It was the only one in the deluge of interviews in the wake of his re-election that actually talked to the staff as well as the President. The only one that got to spend a day in the West Wing recording the staff as they went about their jobs. I recognized a lot of familiar faces from the campaign and the first year of the administration. People who, like Leo, had stood by the President in the face of all the scandal about the MS.

Leo was there, as always, in the background. They didn't interview him per se as much as get a couple comments from him before he was off again doing the President's bidding. He looked good, thinner than I'd seen him in a long time. Even now it's still a reflex to worry about him. To wonder if he's eating like he should or if Margaret putting food in front of him and making him take time to eat something. Margaret has always been a godsend to Leo, and to me. I don't know what would have happened to him if she hadn't been there for him, for us, over the years. Most wives would have been jealous of this beautiful young woman working in their husband's office, but Margaret proved her loyalty to both of us.

The President. There have been many times in the thirty-five years I have known Leo McGarry I can honestly say I hated Jed Bartlet. To this day I still can't say how the two of them met. Leo went to the University of Michigan and Jed in Indiana at Notre Dame. Maybe they met at some college debate, or maybe it was somewhere else. All I know is that for as long as I have known Leo, Jed Bartlet has always been there in one form or another.

Maybe I should have been smarter and realized in the beginning how it would be. Before I fell in love with him. But I never did. Not until I'd lost Leo to what was probably his first love, his country. I met him in the aftermath of his tour of duty in Vietnam when he was still angry and bitter about the way the 'conflict' was being managed. Even with all he'd been through in South East Asia, he was still the most patriotic man I'd ever met in a time when patriotism wasn't as popular as it is now. I stuck by him through Law School and the nights he'd wake up screaming or in a cold sweat from the memories of the war but wouldn't talk about what plagued his dreams. Even after being betrayed by his government, he still worked for them. He specialized in Labour Law. He wanted to make sure the workers of the country he loved got a fair shake. He went into politics to make sure good people got into office, again to take care of the people in *his* country.

When the memories from the war and the pressure of what he was trying to accomplish became too much, he followed his father's footsteps and retreated into the bottle. When he needed to cover the drinking he was doing, he turned to the pills to take the edge off. The night he tried to self-destruct, he didn't come home to Mallory and me. He ended up in New Hampshire. As much as it wounded me that he'd gone to Jed Bartlet I was glad he didn't follow in his father's final footsteps. He might have ended up in New Hampshire instead of D.C. He might have called Jed instead of me, but he was alive and in the long run that was what was more important.

When his tenure with the Department of Labour was over I had my husband back for the first time in a long time. Leo was sober and even though he was lecturing he was relaxed and happy. We were happy. We traveled together, went for romantic get-a-ways where we rediscovered one another. I was convinced this was how we would live out the rest of our lives together. 

I was wrong.

He came up with the crazy idea that Jed Bartlet should run for President. Jed is a good man and his motivation is for the right reasons. Like Leo he loved his country. Leo lit the fire in his old friend and then sat back and waited to see if it would burn. When the flame started to kindle, he went to New Hampshire to get the campaign off the ground. It was like his time with the Labour Department all over again. He was always gone. At least he wasn't drinking. Oh, I traveled with him when I could, and it was almost exciting to be on the road with him, to be able to watch him do what he loved. What I didn't know was that it was the beginning of the end for us. If I thought he'd been happy before being back in politics made him come alive again in a way he hadn't been for a long time. Being in the center of that election, being Chief of Staff was the brass ring for him. It was also more than I could take. The husband I loved was a stranger to me now. He was never home anymore and when he did come home it was to sleep and change his suit. His life revolved around Jed Bartlet and the job he was doing.

That was when I started to hate Jed Bartlet. He had been instrumental in getting my husband back only to take him away again. The missed anniversary was the final straw for me. It wasn't that I didn't love him anymore. I did and in some respects I still do. I probably always will. He's still the good man I fell in love with. He's still the man hell bent on fixing what is wrong and making sure the country is secure for the kids Mallory will eventually have.

Watching the special tonight, seeing Leo as he smiled that lopsided grin, made me miss him. Miss the times we had together. Too much water has passed under the bridge that was our marriage for us to go back now. He's moved on and so have I. But as hard as my life was with him, as much as it hurt to be put second in his life and be told I was second, I wouldn't have traded the years with him. Even when I ended it, it wasn't because I didn't love him or he didn't love me. There were good years as well as bad but I don't regret a moment of it.


End file.
